Dazl

Yes you can. With a portable workbench and market access you can be busy during the wait time.

It may not be the most interesting thing to do, but 160 merits for less than an hour of effort is pretty attractive. For many of the regulars it's also a social event.

The thesaurus can be your best friend when coming up with a name.

An interesting tool would be one that gave you build suggestions. Put in your AT and power sets along with some basic other info, like heavy defense, and spit out build options.

I've been doing the daily hami raid with my main Dazl for months now. The raid is supposed to start at 10pm, but due to the increasing interest the zone has been filling up well before 10pm lately. Once we hit the zone pop cap there is no point in waiting till 10pm, so the raids are starting well before 10pm now. It's very rare that the hami raid is ever announced on the LFG channel, since we never have an issue filling the league anymore. There is definite increasing interest in doing hami raids, but there may not be enough interest to run a second raid at the same time as the first one, but there might be an interest in doing one at a different time or after the first raid is over.

Ok if you don't have VidiotMaps as everyone should here is the links to set it up. If you don't want to use that here is the Paragon Wiki link to badge locations. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Hero_Exploration_Badges

Another way to get quick cash at level 1 is to find all the exploration badges in AP. With the jump pack and ninja run from the PTW vendor, you can do it in about 5 to 10 minutes. After you find all 8 of them you get 5 reward merits which can then buy 15 converters and get you about 1.2 million from the AH.

You might want to consider that. We do the raid everyday and very rarely advertise it on the LFG channel since we almost always reach the zone population cap before 10pm. Another option might be having another raid at a different time. There are many times after the third round is over that people would be willing to do more, and just switch to another alt. 80 merits for the first kill, and 40 after that is a pretty sweet reward for the time it takes to run it. As it is now, most people won't switch toons between rounds for fear of not getting back in.

Our 10pm raid on Excelsior is becoming quite popular and is filling up even before 10pm. We are getting to a point that there could be a second raid if someone was willing and competent enough to lead it {without trying to undercut the first raid}. We cleaned up a mess left behind from an earlier failed raid on Saturday. I give credit to someone willing to lead one, but it's a little more complicated than running a BAF.

Be careful what you buy with them like enhancements. Buying enhancements for 100 merits is kind of a waste unless you can not find it in the AH. Turning that 100 merits into converters will get you more inf than what the enhancement probably cost on the AH.

We surely don't need any server mergers. Playing on Excelsior I never have an issue finding teams just about anytime of day. Now what kind of teams are running can very depending on the time of day. In the evening when more people are on there might be more incarnate raids for examplle, but there is always seems to be people teaming. If you can't get a team for what you want you can create your own. Since you can transfer to another server, try moving to a more populated one and see if it's a better experience. If a deal can be made with NCsoft, then we are likely going to need more servers not less in the future.

I don't mind people paying to power level their characters, and 30 million is probably a pretty cheap fee for that service. Under certain circumstances it can makes sense. For example I have a level 50 grav/kin controller as my main. After checking the forums for some for build advice, I wanted to try a grav/storm controller and since I have a 50 storm defender I'm familiar with both power sets. So if PL'ed I could still hit the ground running at 50. However I wouldn't ever do that because I'm the kind of player that enjoys the ride. With so many AT's and power combo's teaming is always interesting and different at any level. Sure you may not have access to all your powers, but even that can be fun, since you have to effectively use the powers you have. Compared to when the game launched, it's really easy to get to 50 now. By running DFB, DIB, SBB, TF's, MSR, and ITF you will hit 50 pretty quickly. If you want to check what you character will be like at 50, you can copy any of you current characters to the test server with the Beta Account Center link. Once copied use the /gmotd to see how to make them 50 and if you use the Freebies Popmenu (see beta forums) you can quickly slot any of the enhancements you want.

You should save them and use them to create IO's post 25. Level 25 IO's are nearly the same as level 50 SO's. Since you don't out level IO's, you can save a lot of influence crafting them instead of buying DO or SO's.

One thing to remember is that back when the game launched we didn't have all the early game friendly features we have now. It would be hard for us to say it sucked back then compared to now since we didn't have anything else to compare it to at the time. Heck just the idea of playing a superhero MMO was out of the box, much less one that gave you so many powers and costume options. In hind sight the early game was much harder (which might not have been such a bad thing), getting to 50 was the main goal. The incarnate system created a whole new reason to keep playing after 50. Even though the early game is much easier now, there is a bigger game post 50 now.